Take a look at this nice video on RA’s Real Scene section about Detroit, MI.

Detroit nowadays has a lot of unemployment problems and looks like an abandoned city: economy collapsed and buildings are falling apart, in 2013 Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history.

There was a time when Detroit was a florid huge automobile production centre (GM, Chrysler, and Ford) and lots of people migrated to the city and the suburbs to work, black people especially. But what I want to talk about Detroit is something more important: it’s called TECHNO.

Detroit is the city where techno was born from the mind and the fingers of some eclectic youngsters and their enthusiastic friends, it was the place where in the early 80s the Electrifying Mojo would use the airwaves to spread the new language, it was a place where you could go and dance your ass off in abandoned buildings or improvised clubs with a new dark and synthethic sound. This was not Chicago with its House funky beats, not even New York and its Disco shit. Detroit was cold, decaying, racially instable, poor, post industrial and dark.

The conjunction for the birth of techno may relies here: a strong northern soul/funk legacy fused with popular Chicago House mixed up with sci-fi and Futuristic imaginery, Acid House and post industrial rage.

This is what I think made Detroit techno producers so unique: the ability to groove and to catch your soul.

there is a splendid documentary called High-Tech Soul to watch if you want to learn about the details of how everything came up togheter from the famous Belleville three (Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson) and how they needed to move to Europe (England) to legitimete themselves.

I got to tell you, I watch VEGUCATED and I really really enjoyed it.
Of course some tears fall from my eyes but it’s ok, it’s an emotional issue for me…seeing ppl getting to know what Veganism is about, going through the “eyes opening” process and so on, it’s a good thing for me. I always get touched.

the movie is directed by Marisa Miller Wolfson and won the Best Documentary at Toronto Independent Film Festival in 2011.

Really, I recommend everyone to see the movie, especially kids in school.

It’s not just terrifying images of slaughterhouses movie (yes, something you’ll see but…) and the story is real: three different persons get initiated to the vegan diet, through medical visits, lectures, documentaries and trips to farms. everything falls into its right place: once you open your eyes and see what actually means eating meat you cannot go back anymore.

This is another great doc about food, global warming, sustainability and the influence of the meat industry on our climate (and the climate change) and on the devastation of our environment, water and air.

if you take some time to watch the movie you’ll discover the relation intercurring between the huge release of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and the consumption of meat in your diet. Yes it’s all related, like Marianne Thieme explains in the doc, eighteen percent (18) of global greenhouse gas emission are caused by livestock farming. Farmed animals.

mmmm…so..wait…are we talking about cows farting and burping? yes you got it. it’s called METHANE.

Now see this: all the transportation in the world (cars, trains, ships, airplanes etc etc) sends out in the air 13% of total global emission, so less than industrial farming, are you shocked already?

Now, do you still think it’s ok to please your tongue with that bloody and full of antibiotic steak? are you still living the lie of telling yourself that your meat and dairy comes from happy and free to move around animals?…cmooooon… you better act somehow and get your responsabilities!

more on this: about 40/50% of all the cereals and 75% of soy farmed in the world are not eaten by human but by livestock to get fat so humans can eat them (and soy is farmed mostly in Brazil which keeps cutting down Amazonian rainforest to make place for more soya field).

A recent FAO study points out that human population has raised from 2.6 billions in 1950 to 6 billions in 2000 and the production of industrial edible meat increased from 45 billions of kilos in 1950 to 233 billions in 2000, so they predict that in 2050 the human population will touch 9 billions of units and the production of meat will hit 450 billions of kilos doubling the emission of greenhouse gasses…

I suggest to watch this doc before dinner so to get motivated on changing your diet and make the world a more sustainable place to live in, for us and the future humans.

“At the time when most of the West was rocking out to guitar gods, something very different was born in Germany: electronic music was virgin.”

Great documentary aired on BBC FOUR about the german movement called KRAUTROCK where a bunch of uncompromising and original artists, in between 1968 and 1977, were looking for a way to exit their heavy past creating a new form of music.
Bands like Neu!, Can, Faust, Tangerine Dream, Cluster and Kraftwerk would look beyond western rock and roll and jazz to create some of the most original and uncompromising music ever heard. They shared one common goal – a forward- looking desire to transcend Germany’s gruesome past.

“…there are not knights of the realm here, just happy and experimental musicians.”

I am constantly reading and studying about royalties revenues and contemporary exploitation of music and its placement, this is why I read blogs like Music Think Tank and others aggregating them in my rss feeder.

This time, for example, this post it’s about “Guardian of the free Internet” Vs. “Rights Holders” (labels, artists, publishers) debate and it really made me think and I suggest you to read it and, if you like it, you can comment about it down here. Count me in if you’re up to a discussion!

Especially the “Why are you paying for distribution?” question is something I totally agree with: why do I (or the label which I am releasing for) should pay fees to sub-distributor companies or big distribution web sites like Beatport and similars for doing absolutely nothing? or close to nothing (you know how many tracks gets released daily on these huge web stores and how little promotion or visibility they gets… apart form that I’ve never seen a cent yet…I know I am not famous but ZERO is still ZERO… c’moooon)

This is why lately, while following the ACTA campaign, I am looking at websites like Bandcamp or other direct-to-fan selling platforms and Copyleft, as a very good opportunity and strategy for the contemporary music producer.

I really enjoy this community as everyone is ready to help and sharing their skills which is the best thing it can happen to a curious techno producer like me and you 🙂

In Subsekt you can scroll through geeky posts about hardware and compression techniques or take a break watching photos (I got to say how much I was shocked one day looking through the nice pics section finding a weird pic of someone’s legs coming out from a thrashcan and realize that pic was taken on the street where I live in Rome…jeeeez) but also you can read about parties all around europe.

I want to make clear that I don’t agree politically or strategically with the rioters (black blok and crazy heads or infiltrated fascists) charging and battling during the manifestation, mainly because they received all the attention and left none to the majority of the participants, which where there to show indignation and will to change society and its (wrong) rules and assets.

The main reason I was there was to show my indignation towards capitalism, banks and bankers, not to show haste or to devastate properties (which we will have to pay at the end).

Maybe we are the 98% not the 99% because, if math is precise, I don’t think the 99% want the rioters included, so let’s take the 1% out.

I must admit that I never saw so many engaging duels with the police as this time. I believe they were organized and reading this article in Repubblica.it could explain it even better, but also I think that the police behavior was really provocative (as always) forcing even more people to violence and disorders: I saw the trucks with the hydrants mounted on top, repeatedly charging the peaceful majority in San Giovanni square leaving them soaked with nothing else to do than going home (or charging back). And I also saw police trucks striking in the middle of the people standing peacefully in front of the Basilica.

This is a pretty indecent way to disperse a manifestation.

The political reason and responsibility to me is very easy to point out: Saturday should have been the celebrations for the end of Berlusconi’s rotted government but, in a very unpredictable way, on Friday, the government had the numbers in Parliament to keep on going, so everyone was really frustrated and angry and that anger naturally exploited in violence and riots. So, if the Italian politics were wise enough to put the good of the country in front of their personal grief and stupidity, probably this would not have happened. But this is only a theory.

But I am really tired of the same old corrupted and ineffective politics. Stop the old shitty and corrupted Italian political parties we are tired of your interfering, you had your time, now please it’s time to extinguish.

I also hate all the people which thinks they are doing such a great job for humanity standing behind the police forces, shooting photos and videos. I think this is very bad: these self called photo-reporters are just waiting for the worse to happen, hoping to shot the coolest photo…c’mooooon you are very pathetic – and cowards.

This to comment this cartoon, which is going viral on the web, but I must say the rioters were many, I never saw so many ppl fighting in the streets and squares in a manifestation in Rome.

Last thought to the police forces: how can you stand and defend politics we all know are corrupted and proved criminals?, those same politics which are destroying your life and your future also. You promised to serve and protect the weak, the oppressed and the honest, don’t you see you are on the wrong side?

Finally I don’t think big manifestations can be the solution to change the contemporary unfair and useless society, we need to change our lifestyle, we need to be concerned of what we do (what we eat, consume, waste) we need to experiment contemporary forms of rebellion, we are already there we only need to focus and evolve in a smartest way.

Stop street violence which is so vintage and useless and easily instrumentalized.

I don’t want to wait for others to fulfill my head and my spare time. I want to be smart, modern, pacific but uncompromising.